Archive for the ‘September 29’ Category

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns

with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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Genesis 43:1-15, 26-30 or Isaiah 55:1-13

Psalm 28

1 Corinthians 10:19-33

Matthew 17:22-18:5

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We have obligations to each other. Even what we do (or do not do) in private affects other people. We should, for example, want scoundrels and wicked people to repent (as in Isaiah 55:7), not give up on them (as in Psalm 28:4). We should seek reconciliation, as Joseph was preparing to instigate, in Genesis 43. We should not abuse our freedom to the detriment of others. In Christ we are free to become our best selves.

The story in Matthew 17:24-27 requires unpacking.

The tax in question was the Temple tax of one didrachmon–a half-shekel. Every Jewish male was to pay it annually, although enforcement was not rigorous. The scriptural basis of the Temple tax was Exodus 30:13. It was a controversial tax for more than one reason. For the poor the tax–two days’ wages of a laborer–was a burden. Essenes argued that the tax was properly a once-in-a-lifetime payment. Sadducees thought that the tax should be voluntary. Jesus, who seemed to have a low opinion of taxation (see also Matthew 22:15-22), nevertheless decided not to cause offense.

I have no difficulty accepting this story as genuine. Yet it, like so many stories, carries more than one meaning, depending on the time of the reading or hearing of it. Consider, O reader, the year of the composition of the Gospel of Matthew–85 C.E. or so.

There was no more Temple yet a version of tax remained. Roman forces had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 C.E. A two-drachma tribute to Rome was due annually, and Roman authorities enforced tax laws. In the Christian context giving to the church was properly voluntary. For Jewish Christians, marginal within Judaism, their identity remained Jewish; they did not seek to offend.

In my cultural-political setting–North America in 2018–the culture is moving in more than one direction simultaneously. On one hand politics and culture are coarsening. On the other hand efforts to avoid causing offense are become more prominent, sometimes to ridiculous extremes. Meanwhile, people from various points on the spectrum have become more likely to take offense. “Snowflakes” come in various political stripes. Everything is controversial; there is probably nothing that does not offend somebody, somewhere.

I, as a human being, have responsibilities to my fellow human beings, who have responsibilities to me. I, for example, have no moral right to spout racial and ethnic slurs and/or stereotypes, not that I would ever do that. Quoting them in certain contexts, in which one’s disapproval is plain, is justifiable, however. I have a responsibility to consider the sensibilities of others–to a reasonable point. Yet I know that, whatever I do, I will offend someone, for somebody will be of a mind to take offense. I am responsible for doing my best to be respectful. I am also responsible to others not to be ridiculously sensitive, thereby doing nothing or too little.

Where should one draw the line separating responsible self-restraint in the name of not offending the consciences of others from overdoing it and still failing in not causing offense because some people are snowflakes? The answer to that question varies according to circumstances. One, relying on grace, should do one’s best. If one needs to do better, one can do that, by grace. One is not responsible for the thin skins of others.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 28, 2018 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF AMBROSE OF MILAN, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP; SAINT MONICA OF HIPPO, MOTHER IF SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO; AND SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF HIPPO REGIUS

THE FEAST OF DENIS WORTMAN, U.S. DUTCH REFORMED MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF LAURA S. COPERHAVER, U.S. LUTHERAN HYMN WRITER AND MISSIONARY LEADER

THE FEAST OF SAINT MOSES THE BLACK, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK, ABBOT, AND MARTYR

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns

with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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Job 1:6-22

Psalm 119:89-96

2 Corinthians 8:1-6

John 8:31-38

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We all have spiritual attachments, healthy and/or otherwise. Unhealthy attachments include those to wealth, status, and possessions, all of which are temporary Even an attachment to God can be unhealthy, if one approaches God a certain way. Many people, of course, have healthy attachments to God.

Related to the question of an attachment to God is why one has it. Does one have a transactional relationship with God, in the style of Job’s alleged friends? Such a relationship is self-serving. Or does one have a relationship with God that survives the most difficult times and leads one to help others out of one’s hardship?

When we let go of the baggage of negative attachments, we lighten our load and liberate ourselves to serve God and help each other effectively. We free ourselves to act as the children of God we are via Christ. When we cease to e slaves to sin, possessions, money, status, and anything else that distracts us from following God, we find freedom in God.

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns

with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Haggai 1:1-15a

Psalm 136

John 13:21-38

Ephesians 5:21-33; 6:1-9 (10-20) 21-24

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The thanksgiving for divine mercy in Psalm 136 and the teaching about domestic love and respect (including some awkward sexism and the lack of a condemnation of slavery) contrast with the predicted betrayal of Jesus in John 13. The gratitude to God in Psalm 136 also stands in contrast to the criticized attitude in Haggai 1. Some people, having departed Babylon for their ancestral home and settled there, have built new houses yet oppose rebuilding the Temple. God insists that not only has the time to rebuild the Temple come, but it has arrived already. The matter is one of respect.

If we respect God as we ought, we will want to behave in certain ways, including the care of houses of worship and the treatment of our fellow human beings. We will even oppose slavery and stand against the execution of the innocent.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight,

O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

–Psalm 19:7-14, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)

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Herod Agrippa I (lived 10 B.C.E.-44 C.E.; reigned 37-44 C.E.) was a grandson of the notorious Herod the Great (reigned 37-4 B.C.E.) and a friend of the more notorious Caligula (reigned 37-41 C.E.). Herod Agrippa I, a king because the Roman Empire declared him so, persecuted nascent Christianity and dissatisfied his Roman masters by allying himself with Near Eastern rulers. He sought to glorify himself, not God, and succeeded in that goal. Then he died suddenly. Agrippa’s Roman masters did not mourn his passing.

The Deuteronomist placed pious words into the mouth of Moses. The contents of those words–reminders of divine faithfulness and of human responsibility to respond favorably–remain germane. That ethic, present in Psalm 19, contains a sense of the mystery of God, a mystery we mere mortals will never solve. President Abraham Lincoln (never baptized, by the way) grasped that mystery well, as evident in his quoting of Psalm 19 (“the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether”) in his Second Inaugural Address (1865), near the end of the Civil War.

Glorifying God–part of the responsibility to respond favorably to God–entails being salt and light in the world. Laying one’s ego aside and seeking to direct proper attention to God can prove to be difficult for many people, but it is part of what obedience to God requires.

I grew up in a series of United Methodist congregations in southern Georgia, U.S.A. In those settings I learned many invaluable lessons. Two of them were:

Be wary of people with inadequate egos, and

Be wary of people with raging egos.

Both types seek to use positions of power and/or authority in church to their advantage and get pastors moved needlessly. Those with raging egos seek to glorify themselves as a matter of course, and those with weak egos seek to feel better about themselves.

However, a person with a healthy ego can seek to glorify God more comfortably psychologically than one with an unbalanced sense of self-worth. One’s self-worth comes from bearing the image of God, so one’s sense of self-worth should derive from the same reality. When that statement summarizes one’s spiritual reality one is on the right path, the road of glorifying God via one’s life.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JULY 1, 2015 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF PAULI MURRAY, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY AND EPISCOPAL PRIEST

THE FEAST OF CATHERINE WINKWORTH, TRANSLATOR OF HYMNS

THE FEAST OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, ABOLITIONIST

THE FEAST OF JOHN CHANDLER, ANGLICAN PRIEST, SCHOLAR, AND TRANSLATOR OF HYMNS

The readings for these days combine to form a tapestry about sin, righteousness, judgment (both human and divine), and forgiveness. The lessons also overlap like circles in a Venn Diagram. This richness of content from various sources explains why I have chosen to write from the Complementary Series of the daily lectionary attached to the (mostly Sunday) Revised Common Lectionary. There is also a continuous reading track, but this one works better for me.

We humans make decisions every day. As a poster I heard of years ago declares, “YOU CANNOT NOT DECIDE.” We decide to take one course of action or another one. Sometimes we decide to do nothing. Thus, when we sin, we might do so via commission or omission. There will be consequences of sins and sometimes even for proper deeds; one cannot evade their arrival forever. No matter how much God approves or disapproves of certain deeds, some human beings will have a different opinion. Thus divine judgment might seem to arrive late or not at all in some cases and those innocent of a great offense suffer for the sake of righteousness.

Ezekiel 18 makes clear the point that God evaluates us based on what we do and do not do, not on what any ancestor did (or has done) and did not do (or has not done.) Yes, as I have mentioned in a recent post at this weblog, parts of the Torah either disagree with that point or seem to do so. Why should the Bible not contradict itself in places, given the lengthy span on its composition? To expect consistency on every point is to harbor unrealistic expectations. This why we also need tradition and reason, not just scripture, when arriving at theological decisions. Anyhow, Ezekiel 18 tells us God does not evaluate us based on what our grandparents did. This is good news. What they did might still affect us negatively and/or positively, however. I can identity such influences reaching back to some of my great-grandparents, in fact. But I am responsible for my sins, not theirs. As James 4:17 (The Revised English Bible, 1989) tells us:

What it comes to is that anyone who knows the right thing to do and does not do it a sinner.

Sometimes we know right from wrong and choose the latter because it is easier than the former. I think that this summary applies to our Lord’s questioners in Mark 11:27-33. Jesus, already having entered Jerusalem triumphantly while looking like a victorious king en route to the peace negotiations after battle, had also scared the living daylights out of money changers exploiting the pious poor at the Temple. Our Lord and Savior was challenging a religious system in league with the Roman Empire. And he was doing so during the days leading up to the annual celebration of Passover, which was about God’s act of liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. The man was not keeping a low profile. He was doing the right things and his questioners were attempting to entrap him verbally. I suspect that they knew that he was the genuine article and that they preferred to lie to themselves and to oppose him rather than to follow him. They had matters of money, status, and ego to consider, after all.

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

–The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Deuteronomy 1:19-36

Psalm 110 (Morning)

Psalms 66 and 23 (Evening)

Matthew 5:21-48

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But in truth God has heart me;

he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

–Psalm 66:17, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)

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Psalm 66:17 reflects confidence in God. Yet Moses, speaking in Deuteronomy 1:19-36, notes instances of a lack of confidence in God. The TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures translation refers to sulking and complaining, in fact. These are not the responses of confident people. No, they indicate fear.

Matthew 5:21-48, using culturally specific examples, encourages confident (in God) responses to others. We can forgive others and not seek vengeance, for example, when he have confidence in God. We can love our enemies when we leave divine justice to God, knowing that God might forgive, not avenge. And we can treat others fairly and with their best interests in mind when we are confident of God’s provision for us.

When we act out of fear we are more likely to sin against God and each other, to behave cruelly or at least apathetically. Then we harm ourselves also. Then we injure the image of God not only in others but in ourselves. And that is wrong.

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Then Prophet Jeremiah understood this when he purchased a field. Yes, the invaders were still going to arrive, the king was still going to become a captive, and the kingdom was still going to fall, but there was still hope in God.

The other readings focus on the hope of the economically marginalized. The combination of great wealth and a dearth of sensitivity to human needs explains the lessons from Amos, Luke, and 1 Timothy. Indeed, such insensitivity leads not only to the destruction of the insensitive person but to that of others. Yet the poor man in the parable does receive his reward in the his afterlife while the heartless rich man suffers punishment after dying. Even the the rich man still does not care about the poor man.

The divine preference for the poor is part of the Bible. I suspect that one reason for this is that the poor are among the most easily noticed marginalized populations. Our Lord and Savior found much support among the marginalized and less among those who defined them as marginal. On that broad point I choose to found this blog post. Are we marginalized? Or are we among those who define others are marginal or consent passively to that reality? In other terms, do we care enough about others to draw the circle wider, thereby including those whom God includes already?

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

APRIL 19, 2013 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINTS MURIN OF FAHAN, LASERIAN OF LEIGHLIN, GOBAN OF PICARDIE, FOILLAN OF FOSSES, AND ULTAN OF PERONNE, ABBOTTS; AND OF SAINTS FURSEY OF PERONNE AND BLITHARIUS OF SEGANNE, MONKS

THE FEAST OF SAINT ALPHEGE OF CANTERBURY, ARCHBISHOP

THE FEAST OF SAINT MARY OF THE INCARNATION, ROMAN CATHOLIC NUN

THE FEAST OF SAINT SIMEON BARSABAE, BISHOP; AND HIS COMPANIONS, MARTYRS